CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A family is speaking out after their 5-year-old relative drowned on Friday at Saratoga Cove Apartments on Wooldridge Road
According to Ryu Barrientes' relatives, the boy was at a birthday party, and at one point he was found unconscious at the bottom of a pool.
Barrientes was scared of water, and the family would never imagine the drowning would happen to him.
"He was just a good little baby, and he was a little angel. Many people loved him. Many people loved him," aunt Jessica Duran said.
According to police, Barrientes died on Sunday after he drowned in a pool at the Saratoga Cove Apartments on Wooldridge Road.
"He was at his cousins birthday party. It was a lot of kids. They were at a bool party," Duran said.
Duran said Barrientes' other aunt took him to the pool party, and as things were wrapping up, people went inside an apartment.
"When everybody was doing what they were doing singing happy birthday. He squeezed his way out somewhere he went back out there where the pool was," Duran said.
Barrientes was too small to open the latch, but Duran believes he may have been with other kids.
"He slipped because on his hand he had marks on it on the side of his face he had marks on it as he had fallen," Duran said.
According to police, Barrientes was underwater for quite sometime when some kids found him at the bottom of the pool. Two 9-year-olds unrelated to the party heard the commotion got Barrientes out of the pool and did CPR before medics arrived. No adults were in the pool area at the time of the drowning, and the incident is under investigation.
CDC said drowning is the number one cause of unintentional deaths for children ages one to four
"Unfortunately in Nueces County last year there were nine reported child water fatalities," said John Lennan, media specialist of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
According to Family and Protective Services, half of the child water deaths statewide were pool drownings. Barrientes was the first confirmed in Nueces County in 2019 but as the temperatures go up so do visits to bodies of water.
"They could make sure that gates around pools are locked you can teach your child to swim, but the most important thing is constant supervision of children when they are around bodies of water," Lennan said.
The Saxet Funeral Home has offered to pay for Barrientes' funeral expenses, but the family is trying to raise $2,000 for his headstone.
The Barrientes family is warning the public about a man they say is going around to local businesses trying to sell barbecue plates claiming they are for the little boy's funeral but is not. The only authorized benefit they are having will be a barbecue plate sale at 11 a.m. Saturday at Boozers Rock Bar on SPID.